In the past two decades, air travel has become increasingly less expensive. This decrease in air travel cost has led to congestion of airways and runways across the United States. This congestion can only be alleviated by increasing runway space, decreasing the number of planes in the air, or utilizing current resources more efficiently. Unfortunately, new runways are expensive and take a long time to build. Also, airlines and passengers alike have no desire to decrease the current number of flights. This leads to a requirement that current runways and airways be used more efficiently. Additionally, engineering advancements have allowed for the periodic collection of atmospheric data from the airways around and between airports around the world. Furthermore, this data can be enhanced by a computational model to achieve a near-continuous stream of information on local atmospheric conditions.
Currently, runway and airway usage is limited by preventative measures taken to eliminate the danger of invisible, atmospheric phenomena. Wake vortices, columns of swirling, turbulent air, shed by the wings of aircraft, linger in air lanes and on runways at airports. These vortices can cause severe damage to another aircraft that flies into their path, and can cause an aircraft to lose control, possibly crashing. Small aircraft can even be flipped upside-down by these vortices. Currently, fixed times and distances are set between aircraft departures and landings on a given runway, as determined by FAA regulations. These regulations are based on worst-case scenarios for time taken for a vortex to dissipate, therefore these intervals have a high safety factor.
Similarly, airway usage is limited by measures taken to avoid natural atmospheric phenomena, such as microbursts, wind shear, and turbulence. Flying through such phenomena can cause a plane to become temporarily unflyable, possibly resulting in a crash. Thus, aircraft attempt to fly around areas with conditions associated with these phenomena—but only if they know of their presence. This rerouting costs time, possibly delaying the flight and impacting any other flights that depend on the aircraft's crew, passengers, gate, or runway slot. However, for safety, detours can be made, based on worst-case assumptions about the offending atmospheric phenomena.
The above methodology (using worst case scenarios to estimate atmospheric phenomena) is used because air traffic controllers, radar operators, and pilots cannot see the dangerous vortices and other phenomena on the runways and in the air lanes. If a method were developed for visualizing these phenomena, then air traffic controllers could authorize the launch or landing of aircraft as soon as the runway was clear of vortex trails, rather than waiting the maximum amount of time necessary for the vortices to dissipate. This savings in time, made by increasing landing and departure frequency, would significantly alleviate the problem or air traffic congestion. Additionally, significant fuel savings would be made by getting planes in the sky rather than having them idle on the tarmac. Similarly, by seeing the estimates of the size and strength of disturbances in the air lanes, air traffic controllers could request smaller detours, allowing the aircraft to proceed with less delay and less fuel consumption, and allowing larger planes to go through small disturbances that would be unsafe for smaller aircraft. Visualizing dangerous atmospheric phenomena while airborne will also increase aircraft safety and decrease fuel costs.